Thousands of West Papuans march through Jayapura, defying the Indonesian police and military, risking death to call for the freedom, as the Asia-Pacific leaders meet in Bali.

When young Australians drape themselves in the Southern Cross flag, they do not risk being shot by the Police or military for doing so, or being sent to jail for up to 20 years.

Once men did die under the stars of the first Southern Cross flag, at Eureka on the 3rd of December 1854, when they dared stand up against oppression and fight for what they believed in. They also gave us the legend of the diggers, which has become adopted by Australian soldiers since those dark days on the Gallipoli killing fields.

Since the Morning Star flag first flew in West Papua on the 1st of December 1961, when 1970 was set as the year for independence, it has been a poignant symbol of West Papuan freedom.

When Indonesia became the new colonial power in western New Guinea in 1963, they destroyed all symbols of West Papuan independence, including all Morning Star flags and began a brutal campaign of suppression aimed at absorbing half of Melanesian New Guinea into Asian Indonesia.

Many times over the years West Papuans have been shot on sight or sent to jail for up to 20 years, for daring to raise the West Papuan flag and call for freedom.

A West Papuan congress, marking the 50th anniversary since the first held under Dutch rule in October 1961, was brutally broken up by police and military with guns, water cannon, whips and boots, when the West Papuans dared to claim that they had a right to self-determination and freedom from Indonesia’s long oppressive rule of their ancient island home. Seven West Papuans were killed, hundreds arrested and many were tortured.

On the 17th of November thousands of West Papuans marched through the streets of Jayapura, calling for freedom, as the leader of the free world, President Barrack Obama met with Asia-Pacific leaders in Bali. Many had the Morning Star flag painted on their bodies, clearly challenging the Indonesian police and military to shoot them, risking their lives to stand in their flag of freedom. [1]

As the 50th anniversary of the raising of the West Papuan flag fast approaches on the 1st of December, we can only hope that further atrocities will be avoided, as West Papuan courage in the face of Indonesian tyranny is strong and their desire for freedom is very great.

The whole West Papuan question could have been settled in 1969, when the United Nations was supposed to help Indonesia run a vote on self-determination. If a true plebiscite had been held, it is quite clear that the West Papuan people would have voted for freedom, just as happened in East Timor when they had the chance to vote in 1999.

Instead of a free and fair vote on self-determination, Indonesia was allowed to run the whole show, selecting 1025 men to be lectured under the shadow of guns, before stepping over a line drawn in the dirt. Is that a vote?

In his recent speech to the Australian parliament, President Obama was very strong on human rights and freedom, declaring, “History is on the side of the free.” and “Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.”

President Obama pointed out how Australia was the first nation to give women the vote and so it should be quite confrontational to all Australian women, all East Timorese women, all women of the World, that not one woman was allow to vote in West Papua in 1969 in “The Act of Free Choice”, more often referred to as the Act of “No” Choice, or the Act “Free” of Choice.

The United Staes member of Congress, Eni Faleomavaera, writing with Donald Payne in an article published in The Jakarta Post on 18 November, called for the 1969 referendum on independence to be re-examined.

“In his statement before the UN against apartheid, Nelson Mandela said, “It will forever remain an accusation and challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took so long as it has before all of us stood up to say enough is enough.” The same can be said of West Papua. In 1990, Nelson Mandela also reminded the UN that when “it first discussed the South African question in 1946, it was discussing the issue of racism.” On the issue of West Papua, we believe we are discussing the same.” [2]

Why did Australia so willingly go along with the colonial hand-over of half of Papuan New Guinea to Indonesia in 1962? Was it because we were still living under the White Australia policy and hadn’t yet given all Australian Aborigines citizenship and the right to vote?

Are we grown-up and mature enough now to look at the West Papuan issue and see that an injustice has been allowed of the most monstrous proportions? Will we wake up and do what is right, follow the lead of United States congress members and call on the United Nations to explain why the West Papuan people should not be permitted the vote that they were cheated of in 1969?

Our silence on this issue may only mean the continuing echo of bullets in West Papua, as Indonesia continues to beat all thoughts of freedom from the West Papuan heart and kill many more while doing so.

It was another United States president, Woodrow Wilson, who said in 1918, “No right anywhere exist to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property in a game.”

The West Papuan people were handed from Dutch to Indonesian colonial rule as if they were property, as if they were slaves. Will the World continue to tolerate this absolute betrayal of human rights, or finally decide that the West Papuan people are deserving of liberty?

In 1962 the Indonesian Government signed an agreement in New York, which stated:

“The eligibility of all adults, male and female, not foreign nationals to participate in the act of self-determination to be carried out in accordance with international practice,”

This did not happen. The West Papuan people were cheated of their right to self-determination in what was no more than a fraudulently manipulated sham vote to steal half of New Guinea from the rightful owner.

It is an odd coincidence that the first Southern Cross flag was also raised for the first time on the 1st of December 1854. It was perhaps this unusual convergence of dates that drew a West Papuan, John Rumbiak, to Eureka in December last year to participate in the dawn vigil beneath the Southern Cross.

Has the moment now arrived when Australian’s will find the heart and courage to stand up and call on all our politicians to act on West Papua and join an international movement to bring justice and a free choose to the people of West Papua?

Many Australians once worked along-side the Dutch preparing West Papuans for independence and many still live who remember those days. We helped to built the expectations of the West Papuan people sky high for freedom and then walked away like it never mattered.

If we now decide that it is high time to do what is right and allow a fair go for the people of West Papua, then we may begin to see the way toward our own full independence as a nation, with a new Southern Cross flag to fly in our skies and even consider the anniversary of the raising of that first Southern Cross flag as a more appropriate national day for Australia.

It does seem that we did the Papuan people a major disservice. Time we righted that wrong and stood up in the UN and pushed for them to have their country back.
We should also stand up and push for Tibet to get their country back.
On a whole world diplomacy seems to only push to right wrongs perpetrated on small countries by their own governments. We never seem to stand up to big countries or to ones that have lots of natural resources we want.
The list is long on international diplomatic failures and the successes are very short.

Posted by Pete Godfrey on 21/11/11 at 06:45 AM

Re: 1 Pete Godfrey

Tibet might be called China’s West Papua and any pressure on Indonesia over West Papua might serve to drive our northern neighbour closer to China. Going along with the Indonesian occupation of New Guinea has created this problem, which may only serve to demonstrate the need to get this matter into the UN General Assembly sooner than later.

Where Tibet is a global problem, West Papua is our problem and one that we directly helped to create. Do we go along with the Indonesian solution of shooting all thoughts of freedom out of the hearts and minds of West Papuans. That is exactly what we are doing at present.

If we have ears to hear, perhaps we will stop to hear the echo of those shots being fired in West Papua, the cries from the torture chambers, the defiant voices that have been calling for freedom since the great betrayal of 1962 and if we have eyes to see the blood that flows from the heart of West Papua, then perhaps we will finally wake up and decide enough is enough.

Kim Peart

Posted by Kim Peart on 21/11/11 at 08:01 AM

I recently read an Indonesian pamphlet that promoted business opportunities in that country. It included a world map with the Indonesian archipelago coloured red to highlight its location.

There was a slipup in the graphics room that got past the proof readers for whatever reason. The entire Niugini island, including PNG was coloured in red.

Posted by hugoagogo on 21/11/11 at 09:08 AM

Re: 3 Hugo Agogo

A slip-up?

I have not seen it, but been told about it numerous times and read of it, that Indonesia once circulated a map that included Australia as South Irian, when West Papua was called Iran Jaya.

For now the jaws of the Indonesian serpent are locked firmly on half of New Guinea, but there eyes see the rest and its mineral wealth.

Considering that PNG now has over a 50 percent illiteracy rate, have we failed our former colony and left it weakened in the path of any future Indonesian desire?

Kim Peart

Posted by Kim Peart on 21/11/11 at 11:52 AM

Anyone sparked to action on West Papua could always write to every politician in the nation. Here is my letter today. At least one a day:

Dear Prime Minister Gillard,

When President Barrack Obama spoke in the Australia Parliament recently, he was very strident on human rights, declaring that “History is on the side of the free.”

Do the West Papuan people have the human right to have any say on their freedom?

Their voice was stolen from them in 1962 and their nation, a territory the size of France, was ripped from them in the fraudulent ‘Act of Free Choice’ in 1969.

I would be pleased to know your views on this matter and if you feel the pain of West Papua in the heart of our own failure to stand up for their rights, I would welcome knowing what you believe should happen now.

Should we issue an apology to the West Papuan people for our great betrayal, from the heart of the Australian Parliament, for walking away from them in their hour of need and allowing this crime to happen?

Should we invite other nations to do the same?

If the nations of the World stand up for the basic human rights of the West Papuan people and demand justice, then at last we may stop hearing the echo of those bullets from West Papua, the cries from the torture chambers and no long see the blood that flows from the heart of West Papuans.

Yours sincerely,

Kim Peart

Posted by Kim Peart on 21/11/11 at 11:57 AM

#3, hugoagogo, reminds me of a German language textbook we used when I was at school in the late 50s. It had a map of Germany, with most of Poland included within the borders, but that bit was inscribed “temporarily under Polish control.”

Posted by Tim Thorne on 21/11/11 at 05:21 PM

Re: 6 Tim Thorne

In this case, there was considerable border movement in the eastern German border, both after World War 1 and II. The remnant of Prussia that is now Russian territory, between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, once extended deep into present-day Poland. It was the German retaking of lost Prussian territory that sparked the start of World War II.

The half of pre-World War II Poland taken by the Soviet Union in the German-Soviet pact that invaded Poland in 1939, lost for a time to Germany and then retaken, became a permanent international border. The whole of Poland has literally moved West, so that much of present day Poland now includes former German territory. Half of Bellorussia and the western territory of the Ukraine were Polish before World War II.

This geopolitical shift may again become a cause of conflict, if new political forces with a nationalist zeal emerge out of the current European crisis.

Indonesia is made up of many formerly smaller territories that were colonised by the Netherlands. One of those old kingdoms was the Sultinate of Tidore, which held a paper claim to “the Papuan islands in general” (p.11 ‘The Dynamics of the West New Guinea Problem’ by Robert C. Bone, 1958).

Though Tidore never had a presence in Papua, it was this paper claim that became the political basis of newly independent Indonesia demanding possession of half of New Guinea, even though the land was totally melanesian Papuan. In a changing geopolitical future, renewed nationalist forces in Indonesia may yet rattle Tidor’s old paper claim as justification for moving further east and as a consequence of conflict, also south across the Torres Straight.

In this future, the surrender of East Timor may become a temporary aberration. Malaysia may also once again become a location of interest to Jakarta, as it was when Australian forces were engaged in a war there under the British in the 1960s.

Our surrender of half of New Guinea to Indonesia could ultimately come at a very high price to a number of Indonesia’s neighbours, just as the momentum to acquire East Timor can be directly linked to the success of Indonesia’s territorial expansion into New Guinea.

Kim Peart

Posted by Kim Peart on 21/11/11 at 07:45 PM

Kim #7, thanks for the history lesson, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. There was no border shift between Germany and Poland at the time I was referring to (post 1956). The area in question was that part of present-day Poland east of the Oder which had been German between the World Wars.

There had been no serious German claim to that territory since the end of the Allied occupation and there certainly has been none since. Interestingly, the Russian enclave around Kaliningrad that you refer to (the old East Prussia) was not described as “temporarily under Russian control.”

My point is that maps, as in the case of the various Indonesian ones mentioned, can sometimes be the product of wishful thinking rather than an acknowledgement of geo-political realities.

The textbook publishers in the case I quoted were, more or less, using the pre-war borders in a post-war publication.

I think that Germany is more likely nowadays to exert its dominance over other European nations by economic means (eg the Greek situation) than by invasion. In Indonesia’s case, I don’t think their economy is strong enough, so I share your concerns.

Posted by Tim Thorne on 22/11/11 at 10:39 PM

Re: 8 Tim Thorne

Apart from maps and wishes, there is an old fault-line in Europe that once drew the French into Russia and later the Germans, twice. Should this tension re-emerge as Russia seeks to rebuild their empire, events may find their own momentum toward another conflict that draws Germany east. This may be in defence of Poland and other eastern European states, which until recent decades, Russia firmly occupied.

We have seen in the past, that once the German people are sparked into action, they mobilise with great efficiency; and if they feel threatened by an expansionist Russia, the memory of Russian rule of East Germany and that half of Poland is former German territory, taken by Russia to move Poland west, may be enough to revive the German will to act.

Similarly, it helps to remember the history of our north and that the political desire of Indonesia has been for a strong unified region under their flag, including all of Borneo and Timor as there dominion. In this tidy state of political mind, all of New Guinea would also be a logical expansion, especially with PNG in such a weakened position.

Thus the stage could be set for an Australian conflict with Indonesia, which may be sparked by dangerous climate change and pressure from China for Australia to accept a few million Indonesian refugees. This could lead to geopolitical change that sees the Indonesian flag flying in the north of Australia, with or without a conflict.

How we deal with the West Papuan question, even now, may hold the key to our own self-determination and freedom of choice.

We have sleepily and sluggishly allowed Indonesia to remove our forward defence and position their forces in western New Guinea, just a few kilometres from our northern front door in the Torres Straight. This is our geopolitical powder-keg, that could all too easily blow.

Do we know what is worth fighting for, or have we put all our trust in American military power and as with the surrender of West Papua, do what we are told, blindly, obediently, without thinking.

This is why, should China gain the upper hand in Southeast Asia, if only to secure their trade routes through Indonesia, we may find ourselves dominated by another empire and with no mind of our own, just do what we are told, blindly, obediently, without thinking.

Why did we make a stand on the Kokoda Trail?

Kim Peart

Posted by Kim Peart on 23/11/11 at 02:15 PM

Reply from the leader of the Federal Opposition to my letter on West Papua:

Thank you for your email to the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Tony
Abbott MHR.
Mr Abbott has asked me to respond on his behalf.

The Coalition appreciates the time and effort that many Australians put
into sharing their views. Your comments have been carefully noted.